]]>At Found, we’re long-standing believers in attribution, and how it can be used to unlock benefits for our clients. With the advent of Google Attribution and the possibilities that it brings, we are definitely living in exciting times that allow us to seamlessly measure how online channels are performing across the entire user journey.

However, there is a lot of merit in looking at attribution’s past, as it can help explain:

How the digital marketing industry is currently using attribution

How to use attribution for maximum results

The history of attribution can been deconstructed using a series of statements:

“The attribution space is fragmented.”

In 2013, Google did not have an attribution offering. There were industry leaders such as DC Storm, Visual IQ and Convertro who purely focused on attribution with their own standalone solutions.

These companies also offered specialised servicing and consultancy that made even the most sophisticated, powerful attribution solutions accessible and usable for most businesses.

Fast forward to 2018: all three of these examples have been acquired, and in the case of DC Storm and Convertro, they have been taken off the market entirely. For businesses who have used a dedicated attribution solution previously, and who received the technology and consultancy to achieve this, a big obstacle has been created that to this day is still prevalent in the industry.

However, the good news is that Google Attribution will make significant headway in creating a single solution that, even in its free guise, will be well integrated enough to give you insights that are reliably informed, and that you can easily convert into actions.

“Attribution is being constantly re-defined.”

Never has attribution been spoken about so much before – there is a huge buzz at the moment. But is this a good or a bad thing?
Agencies, affiliate publishers, martech and an array of companies, are coming out with their own new attribution solutions. There have since been small, independent attribution start-ups that hope to pick up where previous independents had left off.
But the main issue is that there are currently too many versions of what attribution actually is. And because there are no standardised principles of attribution, and not many ‘thought leaders’ in the digital marketing space, there seems to be a whole lot of confusion.

The risk that this poses, is that the concept of attribution is being used solely to re-enforce a positive outcome, or positive performance point – not to give a ‘best view’ of your marketing performance. This flies in the face of what attribution is truly for!

“The full potential of attribution is still not understood across the industry.”

As previously stated, there are too many versions of what attribution is, which makes it hard enough for businesses to get a full understanding of what it can do for them. Often attribution sits alongside endless projects, day-to-day tasks and business efficiencies that need implementation, and as a result it doesn’t have its own voice. When this is the case, it’s not difficult to see why “Last click will do for now” is often a position taken by many businesses.

The reality is, measurement isn’t the only thing that you can do with attribution! It can be used in conjunction with pretty much anything.

Some possible scenarios:

Budget: There are PPC keywords that perform well in the middle of converting user journeys. If this is the case, the budget can be increased incrementally for those keywords to see if there’s been a positive effect on overall marketing performance.

CRO: Recent changes were made on an eCommerce site that caused organic search performance to suffer across the whole user journey. The impact of this can be hidden on a last click basis, if that’s where your organic traffic is most regularly appearing in user journeys.

Cross-domain attribution: Users who are donating to a charity are actually making multiple interactions on the web shop before making a donation. You could setup aggressive bid targeting for users who browse the web shop, so that visitors could donate on-site.

These scenarios apply before we even consider the impact of being able to measure online and offline interactions with your business; Google is already making strides towards this, by working towards consolidating its offline store visit user data into online marketing measurement data.

Conclusion

With the onset of Google Attribution now is arguably a very good time to consider your attribution options, and how you could best apply them to your business.
On that note, these are the top three principles for how to gain the most success out of attribution:

Build attribution into your day-to-day marketing mentality. Even if you’re still not able to utilise multi-channel attribution, it doesn’t mean you can’t keep it in the forefront of your marketing psyche for when your business is ready to move to this form of measurement.

Become inquisitive about what attribution is capable of, even if you are using it already. By doing this, you will be able to truly understand what attribution can do for you.

Always question the provenance of a source’s attribution viewpoint. Is the viewpoint well researched – and do they have your best interests at heart?

Found can help maximise your ability to measure your marketing performance by allowing you to gain your own understandings of what attribution really is. And we’ll aim to give you a great start in preparing for your attribution future by teaching you about the past first.

If you want to chat to one of our specialists about attribution or anything else related to your digital marketing efforts, get in touch here.

]]>https://www.found.co.uk/blog/attributions-past-decide-attribution-future/feed/0https://www.found.co.uk/blog/attributions-past-decide-attribution-future/How to Group Keywords for SEOhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FoundBlog/~3/zTTb1kxLyH8/
https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-group-keywords-for-seo/#respondWed, 11 Jul 2018 10:00:53 +0000https://www.found.co.uk/?p=19668As an SEO who is often concerned with large keyword research projects, I frequently find...

]]>As an SEO who is often concerned with large keyword research projects, I frequently find that keyword grouping is the most labour intensive of all of the tasks that I do. It’s labour intensive because it requires solid understanding of a business offering to determine its significant constituent parts well enough to support a healthy SEO campaign. You can’t properly chop up what you don’t yet understand. I’m reminded of The Simpsons episode where Homer visits a sushi restaurant and eats hastily & improperly prepared fugu, a fish which must be chopped expertly before serving to avoid the poisonous sections.

Chopping your keywords up incorrectly can have dire consequences for your SEO campaign – and your life.

It’s easy to see the challenge when it comes to setting up campaigns for complex B2B clients selling all manner of exotic services such as recruitment process outsourcing, HR analytics and – my favourite – single customer view.

Surprisingly, I found that things were a little different when it came to ostensibly simple verticals such as fashion. I won’t list in detail the number of items of basic women’s clothing I did not know well enough to properly place in a keyword group, but suffice to say it was plenty.

It would be bad enough if all that was needed was to place keywords in their correct topical groups. But as is quickly becoming industry standard, keyword grouping has become hierarchical keyword clustering. Doing this hierarchical clustering is essential for proper actionable insight into landing page recommendations and structure but it adds a layer of complexity to the grouping process itself. Now, not only do, say, obscure financial software products need to be placed in the topically correct bucket, they also need to be placed under the correct parent and linked hierarchically with their correct child attributes. Depending on the product, doing this properly may deserve a product immersion session and full explainer from the client, and this is something which can’t always happen.

So what’s a keyword-grouping SEO to do?

First, get your search term classification approach in order.

There’s no way around it. You have to understand the product, and you haven’t got much time. Don’t just try to wing it. If you don’t plan the approach out, you reach a point where you are trying to stuff two quite different things into the same group just to make them fit somewhere and you already have too many groups. You think “that didn’t quite fit but just leaving that one in there won’t hurt”. But soon the integrity of your groups has begun to break down and value of your keyword research document as a guide to a successful SEO campaign is beginning to degrade.

So you need a classification approach to make sure that doesn’t happen.

The classification approach I use is based on clear predefined taxonomies using these 4 levels of analysis which structure and streamline the process of understanding the product, its context and how to chop it up.

How to use Taxonomies to Classify your Search Terms

This approach is borrowed from biologists and it’s the big man on campus when it comes to classification of things that are difficult to classify such as, say, biological organisms, or the different services your new fintech client provides. In this approach, search terms are classified according to taxonomies (naming systems) specific to each level of resolution (broad and top-level, or granular and low level). A taxon is the name of a tag applied to a search term, like ‘red’. Taxa is the plural of taxon. Multiple taxonomies may be used as required at each level of resolution, such as colour and size.

I’ll illustrate how the taxonomies are nested using trees like the one shown below, giving examples across 3 diverse verticals:

Fashion – Items of clothing, footwear or accessories (Pink).

Jobs – Job openings (Yellow).

Customer marketing – Marketing software & consultancy (Blue).

Use this key to understand the examples below:

There are 2 distinct types of classification we’ll cover: product (keywords about the product itself) & contextual (keywords about the larger context in which the product exists).

1. Product based classification

The product itself, viewed at 4 levels of analysis, is the ribbon that structures this term classification approach.

The way in which the product fits into each of the 4 levels of analysis (going from very broad to very detailed) must be carefully established before the main keyword list is gathered.

The taxa at each level of resolution inherit the properties of their parent in the level above.

Product Level 0

Complete product concept

Lowest possible level of resolution

This is the simplest possible one-phrase summary of “what they do”. While it’s often not clearly defined when researching, we should to ensure it’s clearly defined, it’s crucial to be properly aware of it at the core of the other levels and as being the central part of the taxonomy structure. This is found by saying “X’s site is a ____ site”.

Product level 1

Broad product type

Low resolution

Sometimes called ‘parent’

Broad taxonomies are characterised by few taxa. They should be established before the main keyword research starts. What are the simplest ways in which the product concept is divided up? This is often seen in the topics of the top-level navigation landing pages but not always. For example, with a recruitment site we worked on, the top-level landing pages don’t distinguish between product types – it’s one further level down under the main jobs page where the product is divided into its broad types. If the site structure isn’t helpful, formulate the broad types using knowledge of the business. After all we are modelling search demand, not the way the client has structured their website.

Product level 2

Specific product – Not broad abstractions, but real things.

Mid resolution – the level of common experience of the product; is often the product as spoken about in the common parlance of the user of the product – for example, ‘shirts’ or ‘site manager jobs’.

This makes up the main body of the term gathering. Find the taxa using exploratory research methods driven by the level 1 roots. Product taxonomies do not have a taxa limit. There can be more taxa at this level than the levels below. Something like ‘clothes’ couldn’t go here because clothes is an abstraction encompassing multiple types of clothes, and ‘red’ couldn’t go here because red isn’t a real thing either, it’s an attribute of a thing.

It’s a little more difficult to grasp with services and software, but it’s easier if you ask ‘at what level does the user specifically engage with intent?’ – it isn’t ‘customer marketing’ (very broad) or ‘customer marketing software’ (broad), it’s ‘customer satisfaction measurement software’ – a specific use within the category of customer marketing. The user won’t think ‘I’m going to do some customer marketing with this software’ – instead they’ll think ‘I’m going to do some customer satisfaction measurement’ with this software’.

The coloured taxons are a mix of our 3 verticals, showing how taxons from each vertical would fit into the structure.

Product level 3

Product attributes & characteristics

High resolution, granular

Attributes of (characteristics of) the specific level 2 products. Multiple taxonomies are probable at level 3. We wouldn’t put shirts here, as an attribute of clothes, because that isn’t their relationship.

Obvious physical example is colours and sizes. Perhaps surprisingly, gender for fashion belongs here and not at level 1, because a shirt being for men or women is a characteristic of the shirt.

Again, here is a mix of taxonomies from our 3 example verticals – Colour for fashion, Location for jobs and Software integration for customer marketing

Informational Term Classification for Products

While product-informational taxa apply at multiple levels of resolution, they tend to be similar enough across the levels (e.g. ‘what is’) to allow us to use a single taxonomy across all the levels, rather than needing to have informational taxonomies at each of the levels. So we’d have all these in one column or perhaps three: knowledge, procedural, evaluation.

AUTOMATICALLY ASSIGNING SEARCH INTENT:

Some quick tips for advanced analysts:

(a) Hierarchical – Presence of a search term at or beyond the third level of resolution predicts higher commerciality, which increases with the number of level 3 taxonomies applicable to the cluster.

(b) Semantic – Added to this, a term’s membership of an informational taxonomy provides another indicator of the level of commerciality.

Both (a) & (b) above can be analysed in a matrix to give a final ‘hierarchical and semantic’ automated estimation of commerciality for search terms which can, in the cluster analysis phase, be summarised at cluster level. This can then be compared to SERP analyses for high value clusters during the cluster analysis phase to give a final measure.

2. Context based term classification

The same system is used as with product search terms but is a tree going up away from the product instead of roots going down into it. Instead of being product-depth focused, it grows out from the product concept in the other direction, encompassing semantically-near concepts.

This example looks solely at our Jobs vertical. The product levels we just looked at grow downwards from ‘Jobs (0)’, the core product.

Contextual keyword research is normally used to support content marketing and outreach, best performed in respect to a specific content marketing or outreach goals.

How to group your keywords the fast way

Now you’ve got your taxonomies laid out, and you’ve gathered your list of search terms, it’s time to tag the search terms with the appropriate taxa. If you’ve got a lot of keywords, the thought of doing this manually can be intimidating.

Don’t do it manually. Use this formula instead. It will automatically search through your list of search terms and assign each one with the most appropriate taxon:

=IFERROR(LOOKUP(2^15,SEARCH($K$6:$K$200,B5),$L$6:$L$200),”undefined”)

To work with the formula, you need to add a column to the left of your taxons on each taxonomy which will contain a string identifier e.g. ‘shorts’ for Shorts, or ‘compan’ to match both ‘company’ and ‘companies’ to the same taxon, Company. The formula looks for the identifier in a search term, and if it finds the string identifier anywhere within the search term, it will assign the identifier’s assigned taxon (label) to the search term.

It looks roughly like this:

The red-bordered cells contain a working example

Here’s the formula broken down into steps:

=IFERROR(…,”undefined”)

Determines what to output when your search term does not match any of the identifier strings

(LOOKUP(2^15,SEARCH($K$6:$K$200

Sets the range in which your string identifiers live i.e. the strings that the formula will look for in your search term

,B5)

Sets the location of your search term

,$L$6:$L$200),

Sets the range in which your taxons can be found.

Tip: The formula searches your string identifier range from the bottom up and assigns the first matching tag it finds. So make sure you put more specific identifiers (like ‘light blue’) lower down and broader identifiers (like ‘blue) at the top, so that for the search term ‘light blue tops’, the tag returned from your taxonomy is ‘light blue’ rather than ‘blue’. One quick way to do this is with the LEN function. The longer a string is, the more likely that it’s more specific and should therefore be considered first.

]]>https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-group-keywords-for-seo/feed/0https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-group-keywords-for-seo/Found awarded 2nd place in the UK’s Best Workplaces for Womenhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FoundBlog/~3/2YZdkv-vuu8/
https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-awarded-2nd-best-workplaces-for-women/#respondFri, 06 Jul 2018 08:37:59 +0000https://www.found.co.uk/?p=19738Step into Found HQ this week and you’ll really feel the girl power – probably...

Here at Found we have made an effort to create an environment that’s fair, a place where women can truly excel. And even though fairness is definitely not women-specific, having fairness as a company value means that women at Found will always feel recognised, trusted and supported at all times.

It’s no secret that this industry has always been very male-dominant, but we also know we’re not the average digital agency. Found has a balanced gender split, with the team made up of 55% female and 45% male – this is something we are extremely proud of.

We’ve worked hard to build a talented team, one that is focused on the desire to achieve only the best results – irrespective of background, race or gender. From an interview structure based on culture-match, competency, and future thinking, we know if someone is right for a role from day one.

And we’re very serious about salary too. A lot of importance is placed on monitoring our activity around gender split, role compensation and potential pay gaps. In fact, one of our key check points is diversity; diversity within the team, in role types and, of course, gender gap analysis.

A lot of energy and focus is also placed on recruiting AND retaining team members. We’ve never tried to retain staff through the best salaries alone (we pay very fairly) but emphasis has always been on training, development, transparency and inclusion. And we know the value of giving people the opportunity to be mentored by others outside of the business too – from Assemblies and Academies to Lunch & Learns, everyone in the team can share and expand their knowledge.

We’re delighted to have been recognised for our efforts in this way and will endeavour to continue to make this a fair and equal workplace for all our staff.

If you’re interesting in finding out more about a career at Found then check out our careers page here.

Whether you’re a global company or a brick-and-mortar firm, SEO matters. But designing a financial services SEO strategy can be complex.

As a financial services firm, you’ll have a good sense of core words and phrases that your customers might be looking for. But what’s harder to know — and crucial to get right — is how to make sure you’re using the right keywords in the right way. Using the right combination of your financial services knowledge — and combining it with SEO, content and social to create an integrated digital strategy — requires expertise. It’s important to understand how these channels fit together. It’s tricker than you might think — as not all keywords are created equal. For example, while search terms like “financial advisor” tend to lead searchers to financial firms, the search term “financial consultant” tends to come up with job postings. It’s an anomaly, but an important one — there are limitless quirks and irregularities when it comes to using SEO effectively, and a well versed digital marketing agency can help you use them to gain a competitive advantage.

Global Versus Local, What’s The Difference?

Different strands of SEO can be confusing, but it’s important to remember that financial services global SEO and local SEO have the same end goals. Both are aimed at customer acquisition, market positioning, and brand awareness. But, because of the way that SEO has evolved, global and local SEO can seem like totally different entities. The basic difference is simple — and the clue is in the title — global SEO attracts users from all over the world, while local SEO triggers results within a specific geographic location. The better an agency understands your specific business and your needs, the better they will know how and where you can benefit most.

Global SEO has huge potential – but with it comes greater competition. If your services are based online, global SEO is an opportunity to connect with customers everywhere. But the higher the competition, the more you’ll need the expertise to help you stand out.

When operating internationally, the pitfalls are as large as the opportunities. Google have stated that hreflang, the technical directive that governs international SEO for Google’s results, is the most complex aspect of SEO. And when your technical set-up isn’t correct, you stand to lose conversions when your users are served the wrong regional content in the search engines. Fortunately, with the right help, problems like this can be effortlessly avoided.

Financial Services Vary Around The World

If you’re thinking globally, there’s a lot to consider. Tiny details, like if the word for “bank” translates in more than one way in a language you’re targeting, could make a huge difference to your SEO’s effectiveness.

You also need to be well versed in which search engines are the most popular in the countries you’re targeting and if there’s any difference to the financial services industry structure there. There’s a lot to consider. But with the potential to attract customers all around the world, it’s worth investing in an effective global strategy.

Regulations Matter Everywhere

Data collection and retention is changing — the introduction of the GDPR means that you need to market differently within Europe. On top of that, you need to be aware of marketing and data regulations that exist in other countries you may be marketing to, which can be a lot to take care of in-house.

If you want an SEO marketing strategy that complies with GDPR while effectively marketing — locally or globally — the team here at Found can help you shape your approach. We know creating an SEO strategy is about so much more than key phrases, and that juggling the local-global SEO divide can be frustrating, especially with the added considerations of penetrating the global marketplace.

But the right team will take care of the details and loose ends. It may be complicated, but it’s worth it — SEO’s potential for customer attraction and retention is just too big to ignore.

]]>If you haven’t been using Google’s Smart display campaigns in your marketing efforts, you’ve been missing out.
The Google Display Network links popular news websites, gaming apps and every other platform under the sun with advertisers so that vendors can target the spaces online where prospective customers might be playing, reading, watching and eventually buying.

And with the introduction of machine learning, and Google’s Smart display campaigns, it’s been a game changer ever since. This new world order put machine learning to work on display campaigns by finding relevant audiences, helping with the creative content and setting the right bids to meet your performance guides. All on its own.

This kind of automation is unique to Google and claims to deliver “richer experiences to consumers” and “better results for your brand”. Google claims that advertisers who use Smart display campaigns see on average a 20% increase in conversions at the same Cost Per Action compared with other display campaigns that they use.

Hotel search platform trivago’s use of the technology is cited as a case study. The brand used the programme for creative assets, putting together headlines, descriptions, images of desirable locations with its logo. Adwords did the rest of the work, and the combined efforts led to trivago driving 36% more conversions at the same CPA. It’s now in use for campaigns in trivago’s European, Asian and North American markets.

Essentially we’re talking across-the-board automation for display campaigns: handling bidding, targeting, and creatives so that you don’t have to draw up extensive audience lists or tweak, re-size and re-format your creative content for each display.

The targeting is driven by a combination of display keywords, remarketing, placements, topics, in-market audiences and similar audiences. The algorithm examines unique data signals in order to shift bids on your behalf, depending on how well each targeting type is performing.

And you’ll also still receive the kind of reports you’ve come to expect, ranking your creative assets based on the conversions they drive compared to each other. Bear in mind that some may take a little time to ‘learn’ where to position themselves for decent ratings.

So we’re sorted, right? Machine learning has taken over and we can kick back, watch as Smart display handles business and possibly book some time off?

Not quite…

Although Smart display campaigns will help save time, money and energy, we’ll still need our old friend ‘regular’. It remains possible that you’ll want to manually control elements of your campaign, so in these instances don’t be afraid to stand down the robot and do it yourself.

Closer control of creatives

It’s all very well having Google handle things for you, but it’s entirely possible that you want to tweak and finesse layouts, colours and fonts yourself. Regular display campaigns give you that agency.

The turn of the seasons

If there are stretches of time (holidays, for example, or ‘summer sales’ and so on) where you want to alter your budget quickly, manual bidding is the one for you.

If you want to build very finely segmented lists of audiences, you can do that manually with regular campaigns. Admittedly, though, you can maintain campaigns targeting your existing lists while also trying out Smart campaigns at the same time.

And our top tips for maximising the impact of Smart campaigns as and when you do use them?

Always experiment. Play around with drafts and CPA targets (but keep them at 20% or less to allow the algorithm to adjust).

Give your account time to adjust to new goals more measuring success.

Provide as many assets as you can to facilitate ad copy testing at scale.

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that Smart display campaigns have changed our approach to digital marketing. And there’s definitely still room for the charms of regular campaigns, but you’ll want to use the two options in combination – that’s when you’ll hit new productivity highs.